For years going on decades, Star Wars toy collectors were led to believe that the Tonnika twins, two humans briefly seen during the cantina scene in A New Hope, were the only movie characters who were absolutely off-limits for toys.
Hasbro wouldn’t tell us if that used to be the case, but perhaps we can read between the lines when the Star Wars team’s Chris Reiff tells us, “Clearly, we’ve done them, and we’re just super-excited to have gotten to do them. It’s a lot of work to do all these projects and to be able to really deliver something special.”
Somewhat controversially, the crowd-funded cantina offered two separate tiers, a process that was at least partly research to see if fans preferred displays open for shelf display, or completist, possibly for tabletops rather than shelves.
“A ship – you can’t offer two-thirds of a ship,” says Reiff. “But in this case we could offer two-thirds that covers the core aspect of the cantina. It’s tough to say the price point of a HasLab is an entry price point, but it’s an easier price point for a lot of fans, and then the plus-up option for the deluxe to really want to blow it out if you wanna do that.”
“Who knows what happens with the future campaigns,” adds his colleague Jing Houle. “It also gave us a lot of information on what fans are looking for.”
Like a Death Star, perhaps? They both laugh, as we all know they’d never tell us at this stage.